As some of you may have gathered over the years, (I've asked this kind of before in the other place) that I'm terrible with money. Utterly terrible.

One of the main issues I have is that I am the bill coordinator for my flat - not by choice - but all the accounts are in my name and the money comes out of my account, irrespective of whether or not I've recieved the respective shares from my flatmate / housemates... and keeping a tabs on what they get me always trips me up... and sometimes I worry I'm forking out a lot of my own to cover everything and never get to see anything from those owing... Grrr.

I've tried getting standing orders setup, and when that's failed tried to keep tabs on cash-handovers in an assorted disarray of Excel spreadsheets - but I've never really got to grips with building an effective spreadsheet for accounting... so, I was wondering how you lot might set up one?

Should I run days in the rows, account types along the columns? How should / can I keep tabs on bills coming in against when I pay them? And how can I monitor who has or hasn't paid their share?

I have to manage:
Half-Yearly Water (divided by 2; ie. me + my flatmate)
Quarterly Gas (divided by 2; ie. me + my flatmate)
Quarterly Elec (divided by 2; ie. me + my flatmate)
Monthly C.Tax (divided by 2; ie. me + my flatmate)
Monthly Internet (divided by 5; ie. me + my housemates)

Maybe it's a lot to ask, but an example or two would be really cool.. but any advice would be greatly appreciated...

One of my mates who bought a house and rented it out to us (mates) with him living there used a whiteboard in his room to keep track of things.
Rather simple. Names in one column, rent in the next, then 'codes' or letters (G for Gas, E for leccy, etc) and a tick as to whether they'd been paid. All had to be paid before the next bill came through.

You don't need fancy spreadsheets etc.

I could be more trouble than it's worth, mainly because I think you'll all need to sign up, but billmonk do a free service which lets you track who owes what when, kinda thing...Some friends used it last year.

Just use something like a rent-book or accounting note-pad. You need to sign off each payment as it's made; that way there's no arguments.

I would suggest opening a separate bank account just for bills. Every month you and your housemate(s) will deposit equal amounts e.g £100 and all bills will be paid from that account. Whatever is left after moth-end will be carried forward in to the next month. So you will know exactly what came in and what came out with appropriate audit trails in form of bank statements and bills. Set bill to direct debits and you'll never forget to pay. Make bank statements available on the common room notice board so everybody can keep and eye on it.

Never forget the words of wisdom from Untouchables: "You get further with a kind word and a gun than you do with just a kind word"

Ideally you need to split the bills up so you do leccy, Bob does gas, Jim does council tax etc. I've been stung to the tune of £500 by having phone/net council tax all in my name.....call it an expensive lesson well learned!

Unfortunately money is usually the downfall of a shared house, so whatever happens make sure it doesn't get out of control......keep all the paper bills and write "PAID on 30 May 2009" etc on them, even that is enough to show the others that you're out of pocket because of them.

This is something I'm really not looking forward to next year at uni.

Will be my first time sharing bills etc and one of my housemates-to-be is awful with money.

Good luck with your situation snowy. Any way you could change the names on some of the bills so there will be less money to transfer??

I did it the way Koli explained, when I was sharing a house with my brother.

It worked very well... You just need to ensure that each of them sets up a standing order to transfer their money from their account to the communal account.

Also look at changing the responsibility for certain bills! Especially if one or two people are always late with payments. Threaten to transfer certain bills into their names, if they don't buck their ideas up!